


Breathe deep, think far

by laughingpineapple



Category: Dinotopia - James Gurney
Genre: Diary/Journal, Dinosaurs, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventeen languages, it turns out, are not enough. Arthur Denison can appreciate his friend's lifelong dedication to her career of choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe deep, think far

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rocknlobster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocknlobster/gifts).



> Doot doot quick disclaimer, I am only familiar with James Gurney's three books and for this last-minute treat I only managed to review the first one, which I do not own in English. So apologies if the voice is off and if my tiny attempt at worldbuilding gets jossed further down the line. But hey, dinosaurs! Happy Yuletide!

 

 

“I thought it was out of your fondness for caves, Arthur Denison of the Denison Expedition.”

As we set out, these were the words she had in store for me. The nerve.

I was tempted to reply that some scholar back then must have gotten it wrong, that that is no 'multi-tongued' protoceratops standing in front of me, but rather a sharp-tongued one, but held my peace. If my name is going to be forever tied to jokes about subterranean explorations, so be it, but I know better than to respond and thus help spread them further myself.

My interest in this small expedition to a remote corner of the Dolphin Bay has, in fact, nothing to do with rocks or ancient history, but rather with my saurian friend. Not that the scenery has been less than breathtaking. We left Sauropolis this morning, on a day-long break from a series of conferences where Bix is to assist a revered but linguistically challenged corythosaurus lecturer. I tagged along, sitting among the public, and the seminars have been worth the time I lost to my studies in Waterfall City. But today, we have left Dinotopian civilization to tread a little further, along the sunlit coast and now diving into a rocky corridor smoothed by the tide.

I am here to listen to Bix practice. I have long appreciated the higher degree of wit and readiness that her profession requires on this island. If the Babel of human cultures can be said to have joined as one on Dinotopia, sharing a language and most of its traditions, it does not stand opposed (or, rather, parallel, as any native would correct me) to a similarly homogeneous set of saurian customs. My friend sounds almost human when she talks to me – not just the way she articulates her dry humor, but the frame of reference is close to me, even her posture sheds something of what to my eyes is her inborn reptilian stiffness. But I have seen her argue with struthiomimus and chat with stegosaurus and show the same ease with both their approaches to life, easily adopting it as her own when translating the one's point of view to the other's needs.

 

(I suspect that her personal nature shares with stegosaurus specifically a certain penchant for fastidiousness and I am still waiting for a favourable moment to point it out to her, sit back and enjoy her reaction)

 

As we entered the cave proper, Bix once again reminded me that she would not relay to me what she and her conversational partner will exchange. It is supposed to be a literary excerpt she has been studying, from what I have gathered, and she does not feel confident enough in her understanding of it to approach a translation. It was the first time I spotted traces of self-consciousness in my friend's spotless professional image and I was not going to press it; besides, I was content with that arrangement. As a scientist, observing before I can understand is par for the course.

 

I started sketching the cave's ruins – dolphin culture, as is to be expected at every inlet of this bay. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to attach my drawings to this journal as our hosts' arrival startled me to the point of making me drop ink all over the paper.

Two young plesiosaurs had surfaced from an underwater canal, their long necks barely contained by the cave. They approached us with a heavily accented “Breathe deep, seek peace” in the clucking language of ceratopsidae, all wrong in their soft, toothy mouths, and I smiled at the thought that I was attending some sort of two-ways cultural exchange.

“Breathe deep, think far”, replied Bix, honoring the marine declension of the common greeting.

 

Like the pteranodon and the skybax, marine reptiles are not, per se, dinosaurs and they pride themselves in their secluded lives. While they consider themselves to be inhabitants of Dinotopia, their culture has followed yet another different path, one they like to keep private (submerged, one could say). Still, there is no mention in their wording of the 'peace' that mainlanders have apparently struggled to obtain. 'Think far' made me think of currents, of fluid and vast spaces.

 

When the three of them started their performance, I knew I was right.

I still do not know what I listened to: the city's archives have so far provided no translation for the title I was provided. And Bix's reticence was founded, as her beak and lungs were clearly inadequate – or still inadequately used – to mimic the range of low and bellows of her maritime partners. I do appreciate her commitment to expanding her already impressive array of languages, at her age and social standing, and reaching out so far to a whole new chapter of Dinotopian culture. My admiration is sincere, lacking as I am in her aptitude and proficiency for the linguistic side of the sciences. I only wish I could tell her so without hurting her professional pride.

I can, at least, thank her for the show. The choice of meeting point turned out to be due to the cave's peculiar acoustics, remarkably similar to an underwater auditorium insofar as the sky can mimic the sea. Enough, surely, for me to feel as if I was being dragged into the ocean as the plesiosaurs' long whistles set the scene and the mood. Bix chanted along. If it was poetry, it flowed and rippled along the stone walls, joining the restless web of refracted sunlight. There were no structures or rhymes I could discern, but all the same, their voices had the cadence of waves.

If it was theater, I can only imagine what kinds of inscrutable characters might utter those lines. I dreamed of them the other night, dark, long-necked figures joining through dark waters. I woke up from those depths blinded by my small bedside lamp.

When my travels will lead me once again far from Waterfall City, as I already know they will, I will keep my ears open to the sea.


End file.
